I am a member of an email forum known as EmailDiscussions, and I found a
thread about this topic (NOTE: discussion of politics is
prohibited on that forum): AOL and Yahoo are planning on giving preferencial treatment to email senders who pay to send each email to them over those who don't. The
Herald Tribune reports.
First you need to know that both Yahoo and AOL's political contribution tilt sharply rightward (surprise surprise!). Yahoo's BuyBlue rating is 60% Red, and OpenSecrets.org reports that Time Warner's 2006 campaign cycle contributions have a 62% Republican slant.
Of course, both AOL and Yahoo have put up a convenient excuse: it's there to better control spam or junk email. Umm, no. I have got a better explanation. They want to do it for the money. It's a quarter cent at least per email, and considering the volume of email AOL and Yahoo users get, it's easily millions of dollars. Let me explain why (1) it is about money, (2) why it's technologically stupid, and (3) how you can take action.
IT IS ABOUT THE MONEY
As the Herald Tribune article says,
The two companies also stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted.
Bingo! This is why they are doing it. The whole "spam" excuse is bogus. As reported both providers will continue to receive emails from people who don't pay to send emails. In other words spam sent - or more precisely, the spammers that don't have enough money to pay - will continue to reach your mailbox, and if you are lucky, it will be filtered to a spam folder. This pay-to-send system does absolutely nothing to stop spam from coming in. It simply enables paid messages to bypass the spam filters.
TECHNOLOGICALLY IT IS JUST DUMB
Now you see, the fact that paid messages bypass spam filters is also a danger, since it legitimizes PAID SPAM, because big companies are now allowed to spam you without risking that the email will end up in your spam folder. Because, you know, they paid for it! Here comes Wal-Mart spam in your AOL mailbox, and there is nothing you can do about it!
So what will it do, technologically? It will make non-paid messages (personal emails and so forth) more of a suspect of being a spam, increase the likelihood of those messages being "spam" in statistics-based spam filters, and therefore in fact put more of your legitimate emails in your Junk Mail folder. Fan-frigging-tastic.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Here's the good news. You can do plenty about it. First, contact Yahoo and AOL (especially if you are a subscriber to either AOL or Yahoo's paid email or one of the Yahoo branded Internet Service Providers). I happen to be a SBC Yahoo DSL subscriber as well as on a trial AOL account at the moment, so I have the links!
Contact AOL by clicking here
Contact Yahoo by clicking here
There's more. We know from the reported article that
On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing to
consider legislation for what has been called "Net neutrality," which
in effect would ban Internet companies from giving preferred status to
certain providers of content. The concern is that companies that do not
pay could find it hard to reach customers or potential customers,
threatening the openness of the Internet.
So, you can contact the Senate Commerce Committee and its members to tell them to pass the Net Nutrality law that would outlaw this kind of outragious behavior. Here's their info (Chairman Ted Stevens (Alaska) and Co-Chairman Daniel Inouye (Hawaii)):
- Committee page
- Members:
Republicans: Stevens (AK), McCain (AZ), Burns (MT), Lott (MS), Hutchison (TX), Snowe (ME), Smith (OR), Ensign (NV), Sununu (NH), DeMint (SC), Vitter (LA).
Democrats: Inouye (HI), Rockefeller (WV), Kerry (MA), Dorgan (ND), Boxer (CA), Nelson (FL), Cantwell (WA), Lautenburg (NJ), Nelson (NE), Pryor (AR). - Who's testifying
If any of these are your senator (doesn't matter Republican or Democrat), contact them and leth them know how you feel. Contact the Chairman and the Co-Chairman no matter where you are. Remember the hearing is TOMORROW.
Another thing. This might be time to get out of your AOL/Yahoo email accounts. Google is not only a much better company, Google's Gmail is a much superior email account. If you would like an invite to an account, please email me at spandan (at) gmail.com, and let me know you read this on Daily Kos, DDCSV, CFD or my blog.
The idea of "email postage" has been around for a long time, and it never made any sense. Nothing's new that all of a sudden it makes sense now. It doesn't. The way to fight spam is better user education, and individualized "intelligent" filters, not "postage."